Let Men Their Songs Employ
by everyl1ttleth1ng
Summary: Hunter is the drummer in an indie folk-pop band called The Aesthetics. He is desperate to impress Jemma, their enigmatic lead-singer, in the hope that that she'll agree to put in a good word for him with her Amazonian housemate. So when he drops by Fitz's dorm room and sees his collection of obscure Scottish folk instruments, Hunter knows he's onto a hipster Christmas winner.
1. Chapter 1

Hunter and Fitz attend the same American college. Hunter got there on a football (they call it soccer) scholarship after a few years playing for English clubs. Fitz's scholarship for his Masters of Engineering is purely academic and allows him the vocational turn he promised himself he'd take after pursuing his passion at the Royal College of Music in London. The rest of the East Coast university is filled with mostly well-heeled there-on-Daddy's-money types that shun the pair of them.

Hunter also happens to be the drummer in a indie folk-pop band called The Aesthetics. Their enigmatic lead singer is suddenly desperate to throw a Christmas concert gathering for ambiguous and unstated reasons of her own. Hunter will do anything to get in her good graces (in the hope that that she'll agree to put in a good word for him with her Amazonian housemate) so when he drops by Fitz's dorm room and sees his collection of obscure Scottish folk instruments, he knows he's onto a winner. A quick hipster make-over ensues before he takes Fitz to meet Jemma Simmons and the rest of the motley crew of musicians at her converted-warehouse home.

 _Inspired by the music of the Oh Hellos, the movie "Frank", Marcus Mumford,this amazing bit of fan art by renisanz which obviously got itself lodged in my head and every hipster Christmas photo anyone ever pinned on Pinterest._

* * *

Fitz had to stop. No amount of staring from his bank balance to the December flight prices and back again could make the two figures correlate. He was going to have to resign himself to an anaemic East Coast American Christmas.

Alone.

In his dorm room.

 _Great_.

At least, any minute now, Hunter would show up with the beers he'd promised him for getting him through his finals and Fitz could start the process of drowning his sorrows.

He pulled his clàrsach onto his lap and started to play. Nothing like a bit of _The Chanter's Song_ to get a man in the right frame of mind to look out at the pathetic December drizzle and get pissed. He was already homesick as anything. Might as well embrace the melancholy.

The vibrations of the strings resonated with his body, opened up his heart. By the time he heard a knock on the door, he had to brush away a highland tear or two with his sleeve.

"Sorry, mate," Hunter was already apologising. "I forgot you said your room looked over the quad."

Fitz shrugged.

Hunter responded by holding out the pledged six-pack.

Fitz's eyes widened. "Dark Island Reserve!"

"Alright?"

"Perfect." He glanced back at the hovering footballer. It might be nice to have some company, even if it was the company of a blithering idiot. "Want to come in and drink one with me?"

Hunter's face broke into a grin. "Mate. I thought you'd never ask."

Fitz opened the door wider to let the footballer in.

He'd only taken a single step into the room when he stopped still. "Blimey!" Hunter cried.

Fitz looked around his room confused. "What?"

"Can you _play_ all these?" Hunter asked incredulously, glancing from the clàrsach on his desk to the bagpipes hanging on the wall to the various sizes of fiddle cases arranged on top of his bookshelf.

"Yeah," said Fitz warily, half-expecting Hunter to turn on him. After years as a classical musician, he'd never been able to bring himself to fully trust sporty types.

Hunter clapped him on the shoulder. "Mate," he declared. "All my Christmases have come at once."

…

There was some elaborate story about a girl and her house-mate and a Christmas concert but the sheer force of Hunter's enthusiasm somehow had Fitz loading the instruments into his rust-infested Mini before either of them had finished more than half of their beers. It was probably for the best given that there was now driving involved.

"You, my friend, are my ticket to Christmas cheer," Hunter enthused. "And who knows. There might even be a little bit of Christmas cheer for you along the way, eh mate?"

Fitz sighed as Hunter clambered into the passenger seat. He slid into the driver's seat through the open window.

"Door doesn't open any more," he explained in response to Hunter's quizzical expression.

After the requisite thump to the wheel column, wrenching the gear stick from neutral to reverse and back again three times and a vigorous pumping of the clutch, Fitz stuck the key in precisely half way and prayed the car would start. About five attempts later, God answered.

"This car is a boon, mate," Hunter said as they chugged down the freeway. "But you might need to do up the top button of your shirt. And have you got a beanie? Or a scarf? Not both, though."

Fitz gave him a look.

"Mate, you and I know it's a post-hipster world, but these guys are sort of… nostalgic."

Fitz's eyebrows grew further furrowed as the one functional windscreen wiper scraped valiantly against the drizzle.

"I don't even know what 'hipster' means."

"That is the best news I've ever heard, mate. It gives you _authenticity_."

"Authenticity?"

"They're a bit of an eccentric bunch."

"Great."

"But with your repertoire, Jemma is going to _love_ you."

"Who's Jemma?"

"The girl in charge. She's the one who's suddenly become so bloody determined to put on this Christmas gathering." He slid a muted sepia photograph with white hand-lettering across the dashboard. "You don't happen to own any fairy-lights do you, mate?"

"No."

"And how strongly, on a scale of one to ten, would you object to wearing these glasses?"

Fitz took them out of Hunter's hand and slid them on, yanking the rear-view mirror down so he could see himself. "I look like Buddy Holly."

"That, mate, is absolutely the idea."

"Why is it so important that I look like Buddy Holly? And wear a beanie OR a scarf but not both at once? And the top button thing – what the hell is that?"

"We'll drop by my flat. I have the perfect leather jacket you can throw over that plaid shirt. It's distressed enough to cause no concern to the vegans. Good choice on the plaid by the way."

"Why would an un-distressed jacket distress the vegans?"

"Nice one, mate. But don't make that joke in front of any of these guys, alright? Especially not Jemma. She's nuts."

…

Jemma looked at herself in the mirror and wondered how it had gone quite this far. She'd been a scientist, she'd been on track for greatness, she was going to change the world. But now here she was in her thrift-store kilt and scarlet beanie trying with all she was worth to attain to the heights of the mystical quality they called _authenticity_. She had never felt less authentic in her life. But she needed these guys, this motley bunch of misfit musicians she'd acquired along her travels if she were ever to find it, and she needed them now more than ever.

What was so unique about her after all? Wasn't she just another disillusioned preacher's offspring stealing the gravitas of her rich liturgical upbringing to charge her daily battle with guilt with some sort of cosmic significance? She vaguely wondered how Marcus Mumford, her considerably more successful counterpart, was getting on with his folks these days. Was it strained over Christmas dinner? Could he go to church and fake it just like the next guy? At least she didn't have to worry about faking it over Christmas dinner. Her folks were gone. She'd be sitting down to eat alone.

Maybe they watched over her in disapproval but she never seemed to get that vibe from all of those sermons and biblestudies. Joy to the World and all that…

She wandered over to the window of her loft apartment in the abandoned warehouse she, Bobbi and Daisy had converted. Through the dispiriting American drizzle, a pale blue Mini wended its way down the pot-holey drive. The Mini spoke to her of home. It strengthened her resolve. One more fortnight of rehearsals, one more night, one more show, and then she'd be done. She stroked the black-and-white photograph that sat atop her stack of vintage suitcases. She hoped it would somehow make them happy, wherever they were.

…

Hunter pointed Fitz to a covered parking spot near the old loading bay. Fitz expertly slid feet first out of the car window and, once he'd found his footing in the puddles, stepped from under the tin roofing to gaze up at the aging structure.

All around the external walls, colourful graffitied artworks shone beneath the constant wall of water seeping down from the roof. A long-legged deer with extravagant antlers, from which old cameo brooches seemed to dangle; a black silhouette of a grazing cow with its skeleton marked out in white, a couple of storm troopers and Darth Vader wearing narrow-legged suits with skinny neon ties under their iconic helmets, a pop-art image of a blonde woman shedding a single tear, a bored looking owl wearing Buddy Holly specs like the ones Fitz had recently donned and, inexplicably, a giant yellow pineapple.

Hunter was still in the car. Fitz stuck his head back through the window to find his friend had yanked the tiny rear-view mirror back in his direction and was carefully combing his beard.

"You're an odd fish, you know that, Hunter?"

"Me?" Hunter laughed. "Just wait, mate. Just you wait."

…

They traipsed in under the dilapidated roller door of the loading bay, Hunter with the bagpipes and the clàrsach, lovingly tucked into their cases, Fitz balancing the various sizes of fiddles.

A dark-haired beauty in a floor length floral dress and Doc Martens was standing on a step-ladder pulling down a string of oversized bunting that spelled "P-i-s-s-O-f-f" across chintzy floral triangles. On the floor beneath her, almost reaching to the same height as the brunette without the assistance of a ladder, stood a statuesque blonde in skinny jeans and a busy woollen sweater that must have somehow survived even the most excessive bits of the 80s. She clutched a copious armful of fairy lights to her chest.

"Bobbi," Hunter practically sighed, as they drew near.

She turned at the sound of their clumpy boots on the unpolished wooden floorboards and looked them over with patent disinterest.

The other girl jumped off the step ladder with a warm smile, her arms full of chintz. "Hi, Hunter. Who's your friend?"

The tall one turned her back on them to start stringing the lights.

"This is Fitz. Fitz, Daisy." He pointed as if it weren't obvious. "Jemma here?"

"Hi Fitz, nice to meet you." Daisy looked back to Hunter. "Jemma's upstairs somewhere."

Fitz nodded politely in the direction of the two women, who seemed a bit too beautiful to be real, as Hunter grabbed his arm and tugged him towards a rickety looking spiral staircase, the banister of which was bedecked with real-live-growing ivy.

"This place is sort of bizarre," Fitz observed as he gingerly followed Hunter up the steps, trying not to be too put off by the loud creaking underfoot.

"You don't know the half of it," Hunter muttered. "These girls are all bonkers."

The two of them emerged on an utterly unfurnished landing. From above them, against the stark exposed brick work, hundreds of bare globes dangled at slightly different heights from stark black electrical cords.

Jemma?" Hunter called. "You up here somewhere?"

"In here, Hunter."

Fitz found himself immeasurably cheered by the sound of her accent. She wasn't from home precisely, but thereabouts.

They wandered into an enormous room that was decorated to look like some sort of forest grotto. An expansive table made from an untreated cross section of what must have once been an enormous tree was scattered all over with the same sepia photographs Hunter had left on Fitz's dashboard. He picked one up for a closer look. The image was of a wrought-iron gate, invitingly open. It guided the eye towards a set of stone steps under the cover of trees, leading evocatively upwards to an unknown destination.

The small white text, which he could tell from up close was printed rather than hand-lettered, simply said:

.

 _O, Come Let Us Adore_

 _The Aesthetics Yuletide Gathering_

 _By the word of thy mouth, by the card in thy hand_

 _Bring with thee thy own and whatever thou thinkest might best contribute to the general cheer_

 _._

Fitz would have rolled his eyes at the try-hard-ness of it all but he sensed the entrance of another human. More pressing than that, he found his ankles being palpitated by the little paws of a scraggly black pooch.

"Hop off him, Maxie," the woman said and delicate hands, the wrists of which were bedecked with papier-mâché bangles, suddenly loomed into his line of sight as they gathered up the pup.

He righted himself to find the little dog, Maxie, trying to lick him across the void from the arms of an oddly-dressed girl with chestnut hair and honey-coloured eyes.

She held out a hand to him. "I'm Jemma. And you are?"

"This is my mate, Fitz," said Hunter before he could answer. "I think you're going to like him."

…

He hadn't known what to expect so it wasn't exactly surprising that Fitz found himself performing before a crowd of fibreglass flamingos, interspersed here and there with a bunch of reclining twenty-somethings sporting moleskins and suspenders, mohair cardigans and fishnets, twirly moustaches and man-buns, floral skirts and an over-abundance of crochet.

They were an eclectic group and yet sort of all the same. And it was with a great unity of enthusiasm that they cheered uproariously at the end of his every piece, clamouring for more. Oddly enough, the bagpipes brought the house down.

Jemma, the obvious leader of the mob, sat on the floor almost at his feet, gazing up at him in awe, mixed with something he couldn't quite identify. For Fitz, whose music had usually found the warmest reception when he took his fiddle to the local nursing home, the whole experience was highly surprising. He had never before found himself the recipient of such rapturous applause. He was buoyant, effervescent, as if he had downed that whole six-pack of Dark Island Reserve all alone and then put on some dub step for laughs.

All the men with their man-buns and twirly moustaches came up to shake his hand afterwards. The dark-haired girl in the floral dress kissed him on the cheek. And Jemma just kept gazing up at him from where she sat by his feet on the floor. It was getting a little unnerving. The only time he'd ever been this much of a smash hit was when the rare Australians on campus got him to learn the bagpipe solo from some rock anthem of theirs called _You're The Voice._ A lot of those men had gazed lovingly at him, but they had been highly intoxicated. So far as he could tell, Jemma Simmons had no such excuse.

* * *

 _So, I post this first bit of a wintery Christmas fic from the SWELTERING HEAT of my Australian home and confess that there is not even a smidge more of it written. On the weird cold December day we had the other week it seemed so much more possible than it seems right now! And then Pi went and made me that glorious manip! Oh dear. I had the best of intentions…_

 _Nonetheless, I post what there is so far in the hope that a) you'll enjoy it for what it is and b) the posting of it might prompt me to actually write the rest!? We'll see, eh?_


	2. Chapter 2

_That this part exists is mainly because of Brady TJ. He got all guilt-trippy and claimed that I owe him. Maybe I do. Nobody likes an unfinished fic – especially not at Christmas! There will be more but not for a week or two!_

 _The song is called "At Last" and yes, it's by The Oh Hellos whose Christmas album inspired this fic._

* * *

It had never occurred to Fitz that this band rehearsal of Hunter's might be residential in nature. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to Hunter either. According to him, it just meant that Jemma had attained new but unsurprising heights of mental.

The pair were shown to a large bare room on the top floor of the warehouse that had been incongruously panelled and painted white, Swedish cabin style. Two enormous red hammocks swung from the ceiling on either side of a giant knitted moose head that had been mounted on the wall. The floor had been painstakingly tiled with individual sterling pennies. It made Fitz feel oddly comforted.

They left his instruments and prepared to head back to their dorms to pack for the fortnight. At least Fitz suddenly found himself with Christmas commitments that surpassed his plans to get drunk alone.

"Better pick up some strong booze," Hunter observed as Bobbi flipped him the bird in response to his friendly wave. He looked Fitz over as they headed out to the Mini. "And perhaps we should just stop at an op-shop, mate. Get you a wardrobe that Jemma would approve of."

Fitz rolled his eyes, already half-way through the window. "I'm not bloody well-"

"Shh, mate," Hunter hissed across the roof of the car. "Here she comes."

Jemma had exchanged the scarlet beanie for a woolly scarf so bulky on her slender neck that Fitz imagined it must have stretched for miles when unravelled. Her chestnut hair blew free in the breeze as she approached.

She gazed directly at Fitz. He felt her eyes boring into him. And yet she sauntered past without saying a word.

Fitz looked back at Hunter in alarm.

Hunter shrugged and got into the car.

"What was all that about?" Fitz asked irritably when his bum hit the cold leather of the car seat.

"I told you, mate," Hunter sighed. "She's mental. All these boho birds are completely out of their tree!"

"So how did you pick up with them? If I were you I would have run in the opposite direction."

"Ah, you haven't seen them on stage, mate," said Hunter enigmatically. "Now _that_ is a sight to behold."

"They're alright?"

"Alright?" Hunter laughed. "They're brilliant."

"Right," Fitz declared through gritted teeth as he worked his way through his car-starting ritual. "They've auditioned _me_. Now I'm bloody well going audition _them_."

"Ten quid you'll sign on whatever dotted line Jemma Simmons dangles in front of you. She has an uncanny knack for-"

"Ha!" scoffed Fitz. "Make sure you're good for that ten quid. I'll be out of here before tea time. And no I will not stop at a flipping op-shop. I've got plaid for days. It's all my mum sends me. That'll have to do."

Hunter snickered to himself.

"What?" Fitz demanded as the Mini chugged onto the freeway.

"Jemma's not going to let _you_ slip away so easy."

"Oh yeah? And why's that?"

"Because she _likes_ you, mate. It's as plain as the nose on your face."

"She what!?" Fitz spluttered.

"See, where all I can get out of Bobbi is angry side-eyes and middle-finger salutes, Jemma gave you _actual, continuous_ eye-contact."

"I felt scrutinised," cried Fitz. "It was very uncomfortable. It was like she was trying to peer into my soul."

"And what about that makes you so convinced she doesn't like you? You could have taken that line straight out of a YA novel."

Fitz glanced at Hunter askance.

"Not that I'd know anything about those, obviously."

"Obviously."

…

Somehow, on their return, Fitz had managed to look Jemma Simmons in the eye and come as close as he possibly could to _demanding_ that The Aesthetics perform for him that evening before he would agree to play with them.

He could not have imagined the to-do that ensued.

The main open space of the ex-warehouse was cleared of furniture. The already copious amount of fairy lights was quadrupled to the extent that Fitz actually went out to pre-emptively check the fuse-box. Wine was mulled, jugs of Pimms No. 1 punch were prepared, kegs of craft beers appeared next to a table of gleaming empty mason jars. Fitz was offered a quick succession of roasted Brussels sprouts, kale chips, artisanal pickles and kombucha. The platters were then placed on an odd table, which Fitz realised had once been a billiard table but now sprouted an actual lawn. The grass was littered here and there with tea lights in smaller mason jars and bowls of foraged berries. He thought he even heard two men in suspenders discussing the virtues of green-tea doughnuts. He found it all highly disconcerting.

Without warning, hoards of people seemed to suddenly arrive. Many of them brought picnic rugs tucked under one arm. Some arrived alone, most arrived hand-in-hand in pairs, some arrived in large groups.

A stage area had been demarcated at one end with several ropes of the ubiquitous fairy-lights. He wandered up to have a look. At the back of the stage, someone had erected Victorian street-lamps standing at various heights, glowing with misty candle light and looking like they'd been stolen straight out of Narnia. Between the lamps dangled elaborate wrought-iron bird cages hung with colourful paper cranes and butterflies.

Fitz shook his head and sighed.

When he turned around he was stunned. The room was suddenly filled with oddly-styled young men and women, reclining on the picnic blankets that protected them from the cold concrete floor. There was a smattering of fedoras, bowlers and Annie Hall-style broad-brimmed felt hats among the more standard beanies. Many of the women seemed to wear silver tribal style temporary tattoos that reflected the light.

He was baffled. An hour ago he'd demanded to see The Aesthetics play. Now he stood in the middle of a fully-fledged music festival.

Hunter beckoned to him from front and centre of the crowd. He wore an unlikely flimsy white shirt under a tan-coloured waistcoat and a duck-egg-blue linen jacket with tan leather patches on the elbow. His moleskins were skinny and his chocolate-brown brogues were polished til they gleamed. He had liberally brill-creamed his hair such that he looked, beard aside, like a passable Algernon Moncrieff.

"Oh, Hunter," Fitz tutted. "That is _quite_ the look."

"Shut up, mate, and just bloody-well sit here will you? Jemma's had this spot reserved all evening just for you."

Fitz looked down to find a mismatched pile of comfy looking crocheted blankets and three raw linen cushions pretentiously emblazoned with the words _Live, Laugh,_ and _Love_. Not for the first time that day, he rolled his eyes.

"Quick, mate," Hunter hissed. "Hit the deck will you? Here she comes."

Just as Fitz made himself comfortable, appreciating the pint-sized mason jar of dark ale and the little basket of sprouts liberally sprinkled with bacon that had been left for him, a hush came over the crowd. Eight individuals got silently to their feet from various spots within the crowd and padded purposefully on bare feet toward the stage.

Jemma immediately drew his eye in a flowing burgundy gown, her gauzy skirts billowing behind her as she strode through the draughty warehouse. Resting over her gleaming hair was a crown of perfect white daisies. Fitz idly wondered where on earth she'd found them in the wintery slush.

The band members took their places across the stage and stood in poses more akin to the dramatic finale number of a musical rather than taking up the instruments that waited for them on stands. Hunter played one note on a giant triangle and all eight of them began to sing in haunting a Capella melody.

It struck straight to Fitz's heart.

Gradually, one by one, the men and women on stage picked up their instruments and the sound swelled into a rich and celebratory cacophony that filled the cavernous warehouse space. It seemed to Fitz as though he could feel the joyful vibrations in his very bones.

As the first track died away, Lincoln, one of the tall man-bunned guitarists started finger-picking alone. Jemma, who had pulled up a four-legged wooden stool and taken up her tambourine, began to sing.

 _I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you first  
He'd put me deep, deep under so that he could work  
And like the dawn you broke the dark and my whole earth shook  
I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you_

A male voice joined her for the refrain, his harmony enhancing her bell-like song.

 _At last, at last  
Bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh, at last_

A banjo picked up the thread of the tune, played by the other singer, the well-built man in a tight-fitting navy t-shirt Fitz remembered being introduced to earlier. _Trip?_ he thought, and Hunter took his brushes to the snare and cymbals. The chorus of singers – Bobbi, plucking at the double-bass that somehow managed to be almost her height, Daisy, holding her piano-accordion tight to her chest, Joey clutching his custom acoustic guitar, as well as Lincoln and Trip augmented Jemma's lone lead for the second-verse, enlarging the melody and letting it resound in the concrete hall. Behind them, an enormous man _had his name been Mack?_ judiciously applied licks on his electric guitar.

 _You were the brightest shade of sun I had ever seen  
Your skin was gilded with the gold of the richest kings  
And like the dawn you woke the world inside of me  
You were the brightest shade of sun when I saw you_

The chorus of yodel-like ahhs and vocal trills that followed when the band cut back made Fitz want to weep.

Jemma's voice, pushed into the spot-light by the deeper harmonies of all the other singers had an other-worldly quality. As if she knew that to be the case, she kept her eyes tightly closed – her only movement the light tap of the tambourine against her thigh.

The tune then slowed – held only by Lincoln's acoustic guitar a moment while Jemma sang alone:

 _And you will surely be the death of me  
But how could I have known?_

Then the folksy beat surged back in earnest, all the voices, all the instruments and Hunter's drums raising up a toe-tapping rhythm that felt rich and earnest and earthy and satisfying. The eccentric looking twirly-moustachioed percussionist that Fitz thought might have been called Grant, resplendent in an unseasonal yellow singlet and clearly feeling he'd been underused in the song thus far, threw himself into the beat with a frenzied zeal.

 _Damn it_ , Fitz inwardly cursed. _They're getting to me_.

The band cut away and just Jemma's voice rang out once more.

 _At last._

 _You will surely be the death of me._

 _How could I have known?_

And then it all came surging back with Trip and Jemma singing together over the raucous celebratory beat.

The enigmatic closed-eyed smile that Jemma gave the crowd as the dying strains of the song faded away seemed to encapsulate for Fitz the mood of the entire night.

He was a goner.

* * *

 _Love to hear what you think, beloved readers! Have a great Christmas!_

 _Oh, and look out for my Secret Santa fic that goes up on Boxing Day!_


End file.
